


only in dreams

by jasondont (minigami)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Ghosts, Haunting, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, no beta we die like etc, post-ROTS, slight death ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27209038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont
Summary: In Tatooine, the border between dreams and reality is thinner than in most places.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 11
Kudos: 79
Collections: Reto Halloween 2020 fandomium





	only in dreams

**Author's Note:**

> written for the fandomium discord halloween challenge - prompt #2 ("Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them," Edgar Allan Poe)

Obi-Wan opens his eyes to darkness, and at first, he doesn’t know what it is that woke him up. The little room is quiet, almost cold, and Cody is warm at his side, a heavy arm thrown over his stomach. He blinks and sits up on the mattress, trying to blink the sleep from his gritty eyes, and Cody grumbles in his sleep, wakes up as well. The moon is up, and its silvery light clings to the angles of his face, glints off his dark eyes. He sits up on the bed, his right hand already reaching for Obi-Wan, warm on his skin.  
Obi-Wan sighs and pushes him down onto the bed, under the blankets, where it’s warm. Desert nights are cold enough to be uncomfortable. 

“It’s alright. I thought I heard a noise,” he says, and Cody blinks, nods, and for once doesn’t argue. 

Obi-Wan brushes a hand through his hair, rubs his face. He can’t remember, but he was dreaming, he’s sure of it--he feels shivery, anxious, and his heart is beating too fast.   
The floor is cold under his feet when he twists on the bed, and Obi-Wan cringes, but he doesn’t move. The feeling provides a much needed anchor--he still feels half-asleep, disconnected. He tries to remember his dream--it felt urgent, important. Not a vision, but something similar--his mind has a way of working through things while he sleeps, his thoughts always in motion.  
He strains his hearing, but he can hear nothing. Obi-Wan sighs, thinks about going back to sleep.

It’s probably nothing, but he’s been long enough on Tatooine by now to distrust the false feeling of safety provided by four walls and a ceiling. 

Cody mutters something in his sleep, and Obi-Wan looks over his shoulder, knowing perfectly well he’s smiling like a fool and too tired and too old to bother doing anything about it. His former commander tends to frown in dreams, and Obi-Wan reaches with his right hand, brushes a finger over the furrow on his forehead, strokes a dark eyebrow. Cody doesn’t wake up--he must have been tired. He always does too much, even now that the war is over and the GAR doesn’t exist anymore.  
Obi-Wan yawns, blinks again, brushes the backs of his fingers over Cody’s warm cheek and then finally stands up. He stretches, frowning. The night is quiet, but he can feel something coming, something prowling close. 

He’s still half-asleep while he puts on yesterday’s shirt. He tries to remember what they were doing the previous day that left them both so tired, but he can’t--something with the herd? He had to fix a couple vaporators, but that’s like saying the day was too warm for comfort.  
He looks around his little home. The dirty white of the walls looks dark blue in the darkness, and the moonlight stretches the shadows of his few pieces of furniture, turns his only chair and the table into something grotesque. 

Whatever’s coming is closer. Obi-Wan crosses the room and grabs the blaster from its place beside the door. His boots are where he always leaves them, next to it, and after a second he puts them on, the insides rough against his bare feet.

He opens the door. The desert is black and blue and white, the moon high up on the sky like a round, blind eye, obscuring the stars with its light. The cold wind whispers over the sand and whistles between the twisted high and lows of the nearby canyon, and Obi-Wan shivers, blinks once again, reaches out with his mind.   
There’s something. He can’t see it, he can’t hear it, but it is there. It feels… human. Almost familiar. Obi-Wan can taste its fear in the back of his tongue, sharp and too-sweet, and its longing crawls into his chest and makes him want to look back, to his bed, where Cody’s still asleep. 

“Obi-Wan,” Cody says, and Obi-Wan jumps. He didn’t hear him coming. He turns around, a smile on his lips, but the man’s not there. Obi-Wan frowns. When he looks, the bed’s empty.  
“Cody?”  
The thing is closer. He should be able to see it, to hear it--but there’s nothing. Obi-Wan looks around, the blaster against his shoulder, and he wishes for his lightsaber. His heart is beating so hard and so fast he can feel it in his head, in the palms of his hands. It’s cold, but he’s sweating.

There’s something wrong. He’s not scared, but there’s something wrong.

“Cody? Where’re you?,” he says. Cody’s gone. Maybe he went through the back door, or to the cellar, for his ‘saber, or-  
No, he’s right there, right in front of him.  
“Obi-Wan,” he repeats, and he’s wearing his armour, the old one, the orange washed out by the harsh moonlight. He’s missing his helmet and he looks bigger than life but he feels so, so scared.  
Obi-Wan lowers his weapon. He shouldn’t. He shot him, shot him off from the cliff side and if not for Boga he would have died.  
But Cody is unarmed--his hands are empty, and he bears Obi-Wan no harm. He is terrified, and so sad the feeling is overpowering. His grief is a heavy thing that blankets him, covers him like another piece of armour.  
“You should be in bed,” Obi-Wan says, his lips numb, and Cody shakes his head.  
“I can’t,” he answers. He smiles, and the gesture is small and bitter, but it’s better than nothing, seeing his face like that is better than not seeing it at all. “I’m not there.”  
“I know,” Obi-Wan says. 

He does know. He just forgot.

“I am losing my mind,” he tells the desert.  
Fortunately, it doesn’t talk back. Cody doesn’t either. He stays where he is, still in his old armour, and keeps looking at Obi-Wan, sad and scared and so alone under the cold moonlight. Obi-Wan blinks--he wonders what would happen if he were to cross the distance that separates them. Would he be able to touch him, whatever he is? A dream, a vision, the Force, the desert night, playing tricks on a lonely old man with so many regrets and no one to share them with.

He probably would. He can sense him--this thing that looks at him with Cody’s sad eyes feels like him in the Force as well.  
Maybe it’d kill him. It occurs to Obi-Wan that it’d be worth it.

In the end, Obi-Wan turns his back on him. He returns to his empty home, and once inside he closes the door and leaves the blaster and his boots in their proper places. There’s no other pair beside them. When he looks to the bed, he finds it empty.

He crosses the room, awake but feeling as if in a dream, his legs heavy. He sits down on the mattress and puts a trembling hand over the pillow.  
The place where Cody lay his head is still warm to the touch. 


End file.
